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True, but statues in the city square honor the Confederacy. That's wrong. Remembering our past IS important but has to be done factually and in context. Museums, for example, can tell a rounded picture of a man like Jackson that a monument standing isolated in a public place simply cannot.

History is held in books and libraries, not in statutes. It's the people who burn books one has to watch out for. The Nazis, for instance, who made quite a spectacle and feature of it.

What these statues can tell us, in historical terms, concerns the time and place they were erected, what they were intended to symbolise, and why it was felt necessary to make that point at that time.

__________________It's a poor sort of memory that only works backward - Lewis Carroll (1832-1898)

God can make a cow out of a tree, but has He ever done so? Therefore show some reason why a thing is so, or cease to hold that it is so - William of Conches, c1150

History is held in books and libraries, not in statutes. It's the people who burn books one has to watch out for. The Nazis, for instance, who made quite a spectacle and feature of it.

What these statues can tell us, in historical terms, concerns the time and place they were erected, what they were intended to symbolise, and why it was felt necessary to make that point at that time.

Maybe we should keep the statues, but replace the plaques at their base.

"This is in memory of all those who were oppressed by the people who erected this monument, a monument that honored those who fought to enslave those same people. May we find a way to heal the wounds caused by monuments like this one."

Maybe we should keep the statues, but replace the plaques at their base.

"This is in memory of all those who were oppressed by the people who erected this monument, a monument that honored those who fought to enslave those same people. May we find a way to heal the wounds caused by monuments like this one."

"We know this isn't right, but we also don't want to do a damn thing about it."

Read Exodus 21 and try and say that with a straight face. It's a slavery instruction manual.

Yeah, that does give an implicit endorsement of slavery (which is why southerners used it for support), and I'd agree that it does therefore condone it, so I'll retract that, but what I meant by "just accepted" is that it specifies how slaves should be treated without explicitly addressing the morality of slavery per se. It was just part of the culture and the common law.

I can't believe anyone who knows Trump could possibly imagine he would ever resign. That would be an admission of failure. He's incapable of doing that.

Schwartz says "resign and declare victory", which seems likely. He'll tell us about all the great things he's done, then announce that he's resigning because Washington is too dysfunctional for him to get anything done and because he's being unfairly persecuted.